Shipping time for $999 11-inch MacBook Air slips to 1-3 days

New orders of the $999 11.6-inch MacBook Air are now estimated to ship within 1 to 3 business days, suggesting demand for the entry-level version of Apple's new thin-and-light notebook lineup has been greatest in the first week of sales.

All other versions of the newly released MacBook Air, including the $1,199 11.6-inch model with 128GB of internal storage, still ship within 24 hours. But the cheapest option, at $999, saw its shipping time slip by a few days this week, indicating demand for the sub-$1,000 notebook is strongest.

The 64GB 11-inch MacBook Air is actually Apple's second notebook with a starting price of $999. Apple also sells its larger, low-end MacBook for $999, as it has for years.

Last week, Apple released its new lineup of MacBook Air notebooks, with lower starting prices. The 11.6-inch form factor is a new addition, joined by the models with 13.3-inch screens.

The new notebooks offer only flash memory for storage, allowing them faster speeds when reading and writing data. The new MacBook Air lineup also has "instant-on" technology, while the solid-state memory inside the notebooks allow weeks of standby time on battery power.

Last week, one firm predicted that all four models of the new MacBook Air would sell 700,000 units in the holiday quarter. That prediction calls for the new thin-and-light machine to represent 17 percent of an estimated 4.1 million Mac shipments this fall.

In addition, Mingchi Kuo, vice president of Concord Securities, has called for 60 percent of MacBook Air sales to be represented by the smaller 11.6-inch model. If the slight delay in shipping time of the $999 model is any indication, Kuo's prediction that the 11.6-inch model will be most popular could be accurate, at least in the first week of sales.

AppleInsider recently published a first look at the new Airs ahead of its formal review. It also lined up a deal with reseller MacMall, which is currently offering AppleInsider readers an additional 3% off its already reduced pricing when ordering online using the links in the chart below, or through AppleInsider's full-fledged Mac Price Guide. It's also offering $102 savings off a high-end, non-standard 13.3-inch configuration that includes the 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo processor mentioned above. MacMall has most Air models in stock while MacConnection claims to have the entire lineup in stock.

New orders of the $999 11.6-inch MacBook Air are now estimated to ship within 1 to 3 business days, suggesting demand for the entry-level version of Apple's new thin-and-light notebook lineup has been greatest in the first week of sales.

All other versions of the newly released MacBook Air, including the $1,199 11.6-inch model with 128GB of internal storage, still ship within 24 hours. But the cheapest option, at $999, saw its shipping time slip by a few days this week, indicating demand for the sub-$1,000 notebook is strongest.

The 64GB 11-inch MacBook Air is actually Apple's second notebook with a starting price of $999. Apple also sells its larger, low-end MacBook for $999, as it has for years.

Last week, Apple released its new lineup of MacBook Air notebooks, with lower starting prices. The 11.6-inch form factor is a new addition, joined by the models with 13.3-inch screens.

The new notebooks offer only flash memory for storage, allowing them faster speeds when reading and writing data. The new MacBook Air lineup also has "instant-on" technology, while the solid-state memory inside the notebooks allow weeks of standby time on battery power.

Last week, one firm predicted that all four models of the new MacBook Air would sell 700,000 units in the holiday quarter. That prediction calls for the new thin-and-light machine to represent 17 percent of an estimated 4.1 million Mac shipments this fall.

In addition, Mingchi Kuo, vice president of Concord Securities, has called for 60 percent of MacBook Air sales to be represented by the smaller 11.6-inch model. If the slight delay in shipping time of the $999 model is any indication, Kuo's prediction that the 11.6-inch model will be most popular could be accurate, at least in the first week of sales.

The real sad part about this this product should be made in the USA not China!Mac is always late in shipping new products in the beginning.

1) There is no reason to quote the entire article. Forum etiquette please.

2) If the current and historic state of American consumer good is any indication (hint: it is) the reason why production moved over seas is due to the US' inability to make goods at a competitive price. How much more would you pay for having every single part of a produce made in the US? I would at triple the price and that's very, very conservative.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

I got a chance to handle an 11-inch model yesterday at the Apple Store. I don't have a strong need/desire for an iPad because my 17-inch MBP and iPhone 4 cover my needs nicely. But I can tell you this:

If I do develop the need/desire for a mid-size unit, it won't be for an iPad, it will be for a 11-inch MacBook Air.

It was fantastically light, well built, and it was hard for me to keep my credit card in my wallet. The iPad just left consideration all together for me.

I don't know of anyone else using 11.6" 16:9 displays of this caliber (as noted in the AnadTech review) or these 10W CULV C2Ds in anything consumer-based, so I think that could very well be the truth. It doesn't seem like even Apple has been able to gauge their level of success these last last couple years with new products.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Well, my 11" MacBook Air arrived yesterday. I wired the money to Apple last Thursday (we don't like credit cards in europe *gg*) and it arrived on Monday. The MBA was shipped that day and waited for me when I got back from work.

I got a chance to handle an 11-inch model yesterday at the Apple Store. I don't have a strong need/desire for an iPad because my 17-inch MBP and iPhone 4 cover my needs nicely. But I can tell you this:

If I do develop the need/desire for a mid-size unit, it won't be for an iPad, it will be for a 11-inch MacBook Air.

It was fantastically light, well built, and it was hard for me to keep my credit card in my wallet. The iPad just left consideration all together for me.

While I see your POV, my conclusion is the opposite. I have no need to be reaching over a keyboard constantly that I only need occasionally. I can use my desktop or a bluetooth/iPad when I need more data entry.

I think Apple has a great combination going... good choices to have. (I do wish I had $$ to burn tho'... the 11" Air is a work of art.)

New orders of the $999 11.6-inch MacBook Air are now estimated to ship within 1 to 3 business days, suggesting demand for the entry-level version of Apple's new thin-and-light notebook lineup has been greatest in the first week of sales. ...

What an awful article. You people really need to take some basic journalism and English classes.

Your title says "shipping times *slipped*" but you never state what the old level was that they slipped from making it meaningless. Also, "slipped" is usually used to refer to something going *down* when in fact the shipping times being shorter (which is what the reader must infer from the "slipped" combined with the lack of reference), means shipping delays have gone *up*. Your using the term entirely backwards from it's intended meaning, and for no good reason.

As to substance, the fact that shipping times changed does *not* in any way support your argument that demand is lower. You simply don't know all (likely not even half) of the information you need to make even a broad assumption about that. Production could have increased or decreased in either week, glitches in shipping product could also have affected the numbers. It's only the second week for cripes sake! Even if your data is good, it's irresponsible to make any kind of assumption about sales based on two weeks of "shipping time" information.

I can see a lot of people buying the 11" MBA instead of the 13" MB or MBP given that they are the same price. Maybe it's me but the 13" MBA looks odd with it's 16:10 screen compared to the 16:9 screen on the 11" model.

I don't know of anyone else using 11.6" 16:9 displays of this caliber (as noted in the AnadTech review) or these 10W CULV C2Ds in anything consumer-based, so I think that could very well be the truth. It doesn't seem like even Apple has been able to gauge their level of success these last last couple years with new products.

Let's see. The economy is the pits. The new Apple products are the pits. Apple's customer relationship is the pits. Macs compared to PC's power and cost is the pits.

And now Apple's distribution of such over-selling products is the pits.

They left a MacBook Air on your porch and didn't consider the possibility that it might get stolen?

He didn't say they left id on his porch.

I have an unwritten rule that anything UPS'd from Apple is immediately relayed to me the second the van is in sight.

In any event, Apple has formal agreements/guidances with all their delivery services, that explicitly directs them NOT to leave their deliveries without a signature.

My latest order was the iPad and when I called UPS to get them to leave it at the door if no one was home, they informed me their contract with Apple was such and wouldn't do so under any circumstances.

While I see your POV, my conclusion is the opposite. I have no need to be reaching over a keyboard constantly that I only need occasionally. I can use my desktop or a bluetooth/iPad when I need more data entry.

I think Apple has a great combination going... good choices to have. (I do wish I had $$ to burn tho'... the 11" Air is a work of art.)

Yup, tough choice, but Apple is the one laughing all the way to the bank. They're firing on both fronts of the small-form-factor-laptop-notebook-tablet with iPad on one side, and MBA 11" on the other.

I could resist not getting the 11" Air, I already have something running Mac OS X. I want Lion, without the Dock, not another Mac.

Sadly that is the reason. However I am not sure if that becasue of the US overpaying because of unions or China paying slave labor. Maybe a bit of both.

Think of it this way. Say a Chinese factory like Foxconn pays its workers 2000 Chinese yuan per month. Assuming a 40-hour work week and 4 work weeks per month , that's about a 12.5 yuan/hr pay. Converting to USD, that's only ~$1.87/hr.

I have a MacBook Pro 13" and I'm getting ready to head off to Europe for 35 days...every day a different city. I'll be bringing my MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone. I didn't have any interest in the MacBook Air, but just popped into the Apple Store to see what they looked like. OMG, the 11" is awesome! I almost got one in the store, but they didn't have the max'd out ones in stock. At the time, the website said it could be delivered next business day, but by the time I got home it had "slipped" and now it's too late to get one before my trip.

I'm definitely getting one when I get back. I think this is a lot like the iPad. You really don't get a good sense of the product until you get it in your hands and see how usable it actually is.

I have a MacBook Pro 13" and I'm getting ready to head off to Europe for 35 days...every day a different city. I'll be bringing my MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone. I didn't have any interest in the MacBook Air, but just popped into the Apple Store to see what they looked like. OMG, the 11" is awesome! I almost got one in the store, but they didn't have the max'd out ones in stock. At the time, the website said it could be delivered next business day, but by the time I got home it had "slipped" and now it's too late to get one before my trip.

I'm definitely getting one when I get back. I think this is a lot like the iPad. You really don't get a good sense of the product until you get it in your hands and see how usable it actually is.

New orders of the $999 11.6-inch MacBook Air are now estimated to ship within 1 to 3 business days, suggesting demand for the entry-level version of Apple's new thin-and-light notebook lineup has been greatest in the first week of sales.

Doesn't that assume that they had exactly the same number of each available at launch? That assumption seems unlikely to me. They probably used previous data and guesswork to determine likely needs and had THAT number available.

In fact, if they assumed the 999 would sell faster and made more, then the slip to 1-3 days means that it's even more in demand than you note.

But it's all guesswork, so I'd take the 1-3 number for what it really means. WHATEVER number they made, they've sold a few more than expected...

or else there's a component slowdown somewhere... which would mean that all this conjecture is worth the amount you paid for it.

Doesn't that assume that they had exactly the same number of each available at launch? That assumption seems unlikely to me. They probably used previous data and guesswork to determine likely needs and had THAT number available.

In fact, if they assumed the 999 would sell faster and made more, then the slip to 1-3 days means that it's even more in demand than you note.

But it's all guesswork, so I'd take the 1-3 number for what it really means. WHATEVER number they made, they've sold a few more than expected...

or else there's a component slowdown somewhere... which would mean that all this conjecture is worth the amount you paid for it.

Does it really matter? The bottom line: people love a $999 MacBook Air. I personally found the screen waaaay too small, but it was snappy, fast, and aggressively priced. My 13" Air is uncommonly well made, very solidly built.

I don't know of anyone else using 11.6" 16:9 displays of this caliber (as noted in the AnadTech review) or these 10W CULV C2Ds in anything consumer-based, so I think that could very well be the truth. It doesn't seem like even Apple has been able to gauge their level of success these last last couple years with new products.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nvidia2008

No doubt the entry-level MacBook Air 11" is the most desirable sub-notebook (I'll refrain from netbook for now) this holiday season. Across most parts of the world.

Yup, tough choice, but Apple is the one laughing all the way to the bank. They're firing on both fronts of the small-form-factor-laptop-notebook-tablet with iPad on one side, and MBA 11" on the other.

I could resist not getting the 11" Air, I already have something running Mac OS X. I want Lion, without the Dock, not another Mac.

You know, usually when Apple brings forth a game changer, they make sure you know it. Even the inveterate Apple hater is obliged to acknowledge that something is afoot. But with the new Air they just sort of slipped in, like "Cool, here's an update to the Air." Did anyone immediately think, "Holy shit, that's the Mac that goes ballistic?"

As I continue to read the reaction to the 11" Air around the web, the "awesome to meh" ratio is running something like 10-1, which is unheard of for new Apple hardware. I think this thing is going to be a huge, runaway, massive success, another one of those "we keep having to revise our estimates upwards" things that once again swells Apple's revenue and market share numbers.

I think I recently read that Apple's actual consumer market share in the US (factoring out the legion of PCs that get sold en masse to businesses) is close to 20%. If Apple keeps this up they're going to be popping over 30% soon enough, and I wonder if they can't go higher?

With all the iOS hoopla we had all sort of forgotten about OS X and Macs as a competitive platform, but Apple doesn't seem to have.

They spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the grand duke, and told stories of his kindness and irascibility.

You know, usually when Apple brings forth a game changer, they make sure you know it. Even the inveterate Apple hater is obliged to acknowledge that something is afoot. But with the new Air they just sort of slipped in, like "Cool, here's an update to the Air." Did anyone immediately think, "Holy shit, that's the Mac that goes ballistic?"

As I continue to read the reaction to the 11" Air around the web, the "awesome to meh" ratio is running something like 10-1, which is unheard of for new Apple hardware. I think this thing is going to be a huge, runaway, massive success, another one of those "we keep having to revise our estimates upwards" things that once again swells Apple's revenue and market share numbers.

I think I recently read that Apple's actual consumer market share in the US (factoring out the legion of PCs that get sold en masse to businesses) is close to 20%. If Apple keeps this up they're going to be popping over 30% soon enough, and I wonder if they can't go higher?

With all the iOS hoopla we had all sort of forgotten about OS X and Macs as a competitive platform, but Apple doesn't seem to have.

You got me thinking. Will need a few hours before I can respond.

Okay, back.

Here's what I think. It really is about "Back to the Mac". That's how the MBA 11" has to be viewed.

iOS took Apple to an entirely new level. The iPhone, then the iPad. It's an order of magnitude more popular, trendy and desirable than Macs... looking at global consumers at a whole.

The irony is OS X is viewed as a disadvantage to many. They have fear of changing over from Windows. If the MBA 11" was a few $100 cheaper and ran Windows out of the box, it would sell insanely more units. Heresy, I know, but you see...

...With the iPhone, it's a phone. It broke new ground in an area which was just emerging, and managed to capture hearts and minds before they were entrenched in a certain way of doing things. Smartphone interaction and design still an malleable paradigm.

...With the iPad, it basically created something out of nothing overnight. Suddenly, here was a device just for the sake of not even having to use a laptop, desktop, while being way better than the phone. Again, the iPad is capturing hearts and minds before they are entrenched in any kind of tablet paradigm (we can safely ignore "tablets" that came before it since they were never really popular).

...With the Mac, it has a long history, but also it has a well-defended foe in Windows PCs - ubiquitous, cheap, everyone knows how to use it, almost everyone does not have a choice. Windows has about two decades of people being used to it.

The MacBook Air is about the *start* of Apple really taking iOS, iPhone and iPad "Back To The Mac". People are mistaken when they think "Back to the Mac" means Apple re-devoting attention to the Mac. This is wrong. Apple is looking at iOS, iPhone an iPad as the premier standard to which Macs must now conform. This is not like when you had iPod and Mac, where the Mac was still the primary profit driver and core business. I'm not sure at which stage, despite the Mac growing and doing well, that Steve and team conceived of iPhone and iPad, but the moment they did that, they went far, far outside the PC-Mac-Computing "box".

Now Apple has the fairly daunting task of looking at the Mac and how to really apply iOS to it. People have either progressively gotten stupider, even more paranoid because of Windows being horrible to manage, very used to the pure simplicity of iOS, or all the above.

I had a guy come into the Apple Reseller shop yesterday, and he was a typical Windows hostage. His questions centred around, OK, my Mac... Now, how do I partition it, where do I defrag, where do I put files, how do I install, how do I clean up, why are programs still running, how can you have those minimised windows, they must be eating up resources..! etc. He was worried of putting hundreds of files and subfolders in one particular folder. I told him, you can put thousands of files and terabytes in one folder, the only thing is searching for it, even then there's spotlight anyway.

The mindset of a PC user is so ravaged that iPhone and iPad is a breath of pure fresh air to them, because there is nothing to compare it to.

But when it comes to Macs, it's like their brains lock up and they feel as though they're somehow "cheating" or maybe "going to make a mistake" by switching to OS X. The MacBook Air 11" is the first bastion in which Apple can liberate users. It starts with pure desire, slipstreaming OS X into the heart of the mini-laptop trend and hijacking PC users. It will be successful, but the war will be fought and won in OS X itself. The Dock has got to go. Most people are confused about apps on the Dock and apps elsewhere. Forget them knowing what the heck Stacks does and how to use it. The file system has to be adjusted. They see the hard disk and they think of C drive, D drive, and wanting to somehow throw away folders at the root level because they don't know what it does. Launchpad is a step in the right direction, as is Mission Control.

My view is certainly coloured because I talk to a lot of new users, but the Mac must become something you just open, use, and it makes sense straight away. iPhone does that. iPod touch does that. iPad does that. Mac... is beatifully engineered, but the challenge is not making a better Windows competitor, but simply, making an easier, no-brainer computer (that also does not drive experienced users up the wall).

This round of "Back to the Mac" brought hardware innovations of iDevices to the Mac. The next step, are all the OS innovations and ease-of-use. It will take several years, but nonetheless Apple is clear on the trajectory of the Mac.

I don't know of anyone else using 11.6" 16:9 displays of this caliber (as noted in the AnadTech review) or these 10W CULV C2Ds in anything consumer-based, so I think that could very well be the truth. It doesn't seem like even Apple has been able to gauge their level of success these last last couple years with new products.

The 11" display is nice. Not quite the viewing angle of the MacBook Pro 13" but when titled appropriately, looking at it straight on, it's quite stunning. There is some "shadowing" at the very bottom of the display edge but not too noticeable in general use. In any case I'm not sure of many other netbooks or sub-notebooks or whatever at that size that approach the quality of screen. The iPad screen is better overall, but of course it's IPS, albeit at lower resolution.

Apple is totally unable to gauge their level of success. It's like we need to make the ballpark bigger because they keep hitting home runs.

But they are, as always, notoriously conservative in sales and unit estimates. For example, I don't think the iPod nano or shuffle is that hot. So, it pays to be cautious, in Apple's case. It's insanely frustrating for consumers when they want the in-demand gear, but Apple does like sitting on more demand than it can supply, and it absolutely detests the converse.

If I was Apple I'd too be flummoxed trying to predict, on a global scale who wants what exactly. Maybe they need something like Paul the Octopus (RIP)...